Trade Secrets: the cocktail bar kings are back

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The equity salesman throws back his head and howls at the ceiling: “I declare this f***ing recession ooooooverrrrrrrrr!!!!”

A dozen shots are thrown down a dozen necks and another salesman from the same brokerage starts to count heads and shout up the next order. Two, four, six . . .

That end of the City cocktail bar is in uproar. It’s nearly seven on a Wednesday evening and the salesmen and women from this particular firm, a specialist in the shares of smaller companies, have been tearing it up since quarter to five.

It is understandable that the construction of an air-polluting,
noise-blighting £22 billion third runway to turn Heathrow into the world’s
pre-eminent superhub caught the eye, but the Davies report into airport
expansion also made another radical suggestion: that — third runway or not —
Heathrow should start acting like the UK hub that it pretends to be